Projects and the New Year

I finished the wristers a couple weeks before Christmas and they are so warm.  I still have sock yarn left over and am thinking about making "hoods" for my fingers, we'll see.

 

Right now, I'm working on making slippers for the kids.  Noelle wanted hers in pink camo and I'm a little over halfway done.

After making just one I already have ideas to modify the pattern so it will work up quicker, not to mention make them warmer.  Oh, here's the pattern I'm using.

I'm not big on resolutions for the New Year and found this quote and it is exactly how I feel about it.

I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.

~Anaïs Nin

Whether your into resolutions or not, I wish you a Very Blessed 2010!

Live Nativity

Our church is putting on its second live nativity (December 4 & 5) and I'm the costume coordinator again.  A group of us work on the costumes and those days have been teasingly dubbed the Grace Fellowship sweat shop ;-)

(You can see a hint of the costumes to the left but that's only about 1/4 of them)

There are 80 volunteers involved this year and they aren't just from our church.  Wow!

Its fun and exhausting but so worth every minute of it.  Especially when you hear how much it blesses people and reminds them why they celebrate Christmas to begin with.

To all the volunteers..........THANK YOU!!!

What characters are my family this year?  Noelle is Mary, Kyle is a shepherd, Kirk is a wise man, and I'm a villager (so I can help where needed and take pictures :-)  Hopefully, I'll get us together (in costume) for our family Christmas photo.  Some of the families did this last year and the pictures were great!

I am taking off today through Saturday to focus on Thanksgiving and enjoying my family (and hopefully finish my wrist warmers, lol).  I just wanted to share while I had a few minutes.

Crafting Links

I've recently made two handcrafted birthday greeting cards using my computer, printer, and scrapbooking supplies.  They were made pretty last minute so there's no picture to share.  I used a template I printed off the internet for the envelopes but forgot to save it to my hard drive.  I went in search of said template (I found it at Mirkwood Designs ) but kept looking for ideas.  In the process I stumbled upon the website Craftbits.com  I've already got some great ideas for Christmas from there.

Jane of Many Crafts

I love so many different types of crafts.  I know enough to produce good results (most of the time) but not enough to be considered very knowledgeable in any one specific area.  What I mean is, you wouldn't want to learn from me (except to maybe get some ideas from).   All that I've learned, I've taught myself with books from the library, magazines, videos, and the internet.  I've had friends try and teach me but for some reason I just learn best working it out on my own. 

In this Wikipedia article it is sort of a negative connotation but I'm used to being on the receiving end of negativity and try not to let it bother me.  I am who God created me and I'll continue to forge ahead, just as I am.  Oh, I'll learn to tweak the areas that need it but the core of who I am will remain.

Pretty Boxes

With all the reorganizing going on around here, I've been considering ways of storing things in plain sight.  You know,  fancy boxes that sit on bookshelves.  I don't have any of those so thoughts of cardboard, wallpaper, and glue have been swirling in my head trying to figure it all out.

Today I decided to see what the internet had to offer.  In my opinion, the best place to start this type of project is Instructables.com .  I haven't actually found what I'm thinking about.  However, did you know that there is a very simple way to make shoe boxes look nice?  Check it out here.

Here are my before and afters.

 

I had three such shoe boxes so turned them all inside out.

Your turn ;-)

Fall Decorating

I meant to share this a few weeks ago...

My fall wreath was looking pretty sad (sorry, forgot to take a before pic) so I picked up a couple autumn plant pokes from the dollar store to redo it.  I kept the orange ribbon to reuse but everything else went into the garbage.  I tried to place things without using any wire and it just didn't look *right*.  I took everything back off, removed the leaves to add wire to them and then tried again.  I really like the way it turned out.

I'm still not finished with my wristers as life has been a little overwhelming the last couple of weeks.  I'm real close though.

Cozy Crafting Nook

I'm in the middle of moving furniture and re-purposing things in my house. We have this book case that I moved into the living room, next to my end of the couch. Its organized so that I have space to keep my current craft project and my crafting books nearby. I also purchased a small lamp so I can see what I'm doing.


You can see my first wrister (fourth shelf) awaiting its companion... There's also a comfy pillow I crocheted and a warm blanket for keeping warm. Ahhh...

Current Project

In preparation for fall and keeping warm, I decided to make a pair of wristers.

I can never seem to leave a pattern alone though and have modified it to suit my tastes and preferences :-)

I'll share a pic when I'm done.

Here's to Sharing my Craftier Side!

I'm launching this new blog to share my love of crafting with my friends, both old and new. Hopefully it will also motivate me to put some things into an Etsy shop. The holidays are coming so I'm sure others might be looking for gifts. We shall see what unfolds. =D

(The posts before this one are imported from another blog because they fit the theme, enjoy)

More About CQing

Here's an update on my CQ square.
I still have a lot more embellishing to do.

The day before Mother's Day I bought a bunch of different colored costume satins out of the bargain bin at Walmart (Who can pass up $2/yard?) and some trims.

Another great resource for fabrics and trims are yard sales. Especially little girl dresses. I found this one on Friday for $1 I have accumulated a lot of buttons, threads, fabrics, trims, batting, needles, ribbons, beads, etc. over the years this way.

Thinking Ahead

Let the scrapbooking begin

I finally got the rest of the supplies I needed today. Bought a trimmer (mine's black), a pen for journaling, and some double sided tape. I have a nice blue 12" x 12" expandable scrapbook with side loading protectors (got is many years ago and can't even find any like it now but the top loadable ones will fit in it). It also came with some solid and patterned papers, stencils, photo tabs, and decorative edge scissors.

I have a dear friend who has made many scrapbooks in regular photo albums (and does a really nice job) who wants to do this with me. We're going to get together one night a week to do it. What a great motivator for a new hobby, adult girl time!

I do still have a lot of photo organizing to do when at home, as well as removing photos from old magnetic photo albums that the majority of my pictures are stored in. Please say a little prayer that none of my pictures get ruined while being removed.